IE7 Final Released

October 19, 2006 1 Comment

About 18 months after it was announced, IE7 is now available for download. It looks like it will be rolled out via automatic update “real soon now”. I wasn't going to blog about this, but changed my mind for a couple reasons. First, it impacts LQ. While for October 58% of all LQ visitors are using Firefox, there are still 28% using IE (on a somewhat surprising note, almost 10% of IE users are already at 7 as of yesterday). That means I have to test the site in IE7. Second, I think this is a shining example of why the Microsoft monopoly is bad. The last real release of IE was in 2001. If it weren't for the spectacular success of Firefox, I have no doubt that IE7 would still be years off. Think of how much the web has changed since 2001 and it's nothing short of astonishing that no real updates have been released in that time frame. If you do any kind of design for a high traffic site, you're well aware that the lack of a release isn't because everything works perfectly. To be honest, we gave up on IE-only fixes a while ago at LQ. We do make sure everything *works*, but some things look odd in IE (and only IE).
So far, the anecdotal reports I'm seeing don't instill a whole lot of confidence. I decided to fire up VMWare and install IE7, both to test LQ and to just check it out in general. The install is a bit odd. The first thing it did was download “updates” (how many updates can there be for a product released less than 24 hours ago). Then, it just sort of hung. No real progress bar or status indicator. Since I don't use Windows for actual work I just let it sit there. It did eventually indicate the install was successful about 15 minutes later, but if that was my main workstation I don't know if I would have waited that long. One reboot later, the install was done. I have to admit I only tested things for about 15 minutes, but the biggest two letdowns are that the oddities in the rendering of LQ are still there and the interface is absolutely horrific. It's possibly the hardest to use app I've seen out of Redmond. It may be that I just need to get used to the UI and then it will be great, but luckily for me I don't need to find out. On the up side, the rendering engine is definitely faster than IE 6 and the handling of RSS feeds is much improved. It should be interesting to watch as IE7 gets rolled out en masse over the next few weeks. Will it be a smooth transition or will the Internet be filled with complaints over broken and semi-functional web sites. As the web becomes more and more critical to peoples lives and businesses, this kind of things matters more and more. On that note, Firefox 2 is in late release candidate shape and should be ready for release very soon.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

Flash 9 Linux Beta Is Live

October 18, 2006 2 Comments

I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, but a publicly available beta of Flash 9 for Linux is now available. Kudos to the Adobe Linux Flash team for the hard work. From the linked blog post:
While we are still working out exactly how to distribute the final Player version to be as easy as possible for the typical end user, this beta includes 2 gzip'd tarball packages: one is for the Mozilla plugin and the other is for a GTK-based Standalone Flash Player. Either will need to be downloaded manually via the Adobe Labs website and unpacked. The standalone Player (gflashplayer) can be run in place (after you set its executable permission). The plugin is dropped into your local plugin directory (for a local user) or the system-wide plugin directory.
This release has been anticipated for a while now. Before you install it I'd recommend reading the Beta Release Notes. That being said, go get it! Quality bug reports are key, so if you run across something make sure to report it.
–jeremy
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McAfee, Symantec Think Vista Unfair: Update

October 17, 2006 Leave a comment

A follow up to this post. It looks like Microsoft has done an about-face, and will allow kernel level access in Vista. From the article:
Microsoft Now Decides to Accept Outside Security for Vista
Until now, Microsoft had planned to block those companies from installing their products in the deepest levels of the new operating system, which is scheduled for release early next year.
Microsoft's shift means that users would continue to have a choice in the programs they use to protect their computers and not be tied to something that Microsoft offers.
I'd guess that Microsoft was just testing the water here, seeing what they could get away with. While the advertisement of their security and anti-virus products at system boot seems way over the top, denying kernel level access is much more reasonable (once again, as long as all of their products also play by those same rules). What is Symantec and McAfee going to do if Microsoft is ever able to create an OS that is reasonably secure? Why is it that some anti-virus vendors had absolutely no problem with this? In the end, Microsoft probably lost two close allies and business partners here, but in the short term neither McAfee or Symantec can do much damage to Microsoft. In the long run though, the gradual erosion of application vendors will be a devastating loss for Microsoft. One of the real and legitimate knocks on Linux is the lack of application support. As Microsoft slowly assails on nearly every business parter (and even channel partner) it has, more and more vendors will be looking to move to an alternative stack. Linux is ready and waiting.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

LQ Job Marketplace Update

October 16, 2006 Leave a comment

A couple months ago, we announced the LQ Job Marketplace. We knew a huge talent pool existed in the LQ membership, and we wanted to connect those talented members with people with quality Linux, Open Source and Programming jobs. So far it's been a success. Here's a recent post:
I just wanted to post a quick update that I hope people thinking about posting a job advert will appreciate.
I've had about 6 responses to this advert all from top quality people who know a lot about Linux. I am now in a position where the server I need administering is up-to-date and am waiting for the rest of the business to catch up. It is totally worth posting to this forum, even if it costs a few quid. The quality of the people you will make contact with is second to none … also that few quid is going to a very good website. I'll certainly be posting back here if I have any Linux related jobs come up again.
It's great to see the employers are getting the results they're looking for. This is a real win/win/win situation, which is rare. Employers get an inexpensive way to get their job posting out there, we're able to connect members to potential gainful employment in the FOSS world, and LQ makes a few nickels in the process. One great thing is that real discussion is taking place in many of the postings. If you haven't seen it yet, head over to the LQ Job Marketplace.
–jeremy
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Libya Purchases 1.2M OLPC Laptops

October 12, 2006 Leave a comment

A quick follow up to recent OLPC post, it appears that the initiative has secured its first purchaser. Libya has agreed to provide each and every one of its school children with a laptop. From the article:
The government of Libya is reported to have agreed to provide its 1.2m school children with a cheap durable laptop computer by June 2008.
The laptops offer internet access and are powered by a wind-up crank. They cost $100 and manufacturing begins next year, says One Laptop per Child.
The non-profit association's chairman, Nicholas Negroponte, said the deal was reached on Tuesday in Libya.
It's great to see a country finally commit to this. Tentative purchase agreements with Brazil, Argentina, Nigeria and Thailand have been announced in the past. There is even talk of the possibility of Libya’s financing the purchase of laptops for a group of poorer African nations like Chad, Niger and Rwanda. Libya has come a long way in the last 10 years or so. While they're still remembered by many as a terrorist state from yesteryear, the reality is that these days they have one of the highest standard of living in Africa, the highest Human Development Index in Africa and one of the highest GDPs in Africa. A commitment to this initiative shows that Qaddafi is serious about a more open Libya. It's especially surprising to me that a a dictatorship was the first to move forward with the OLPC effort. Education can be a tenuous line for a dictatorship, for fear that a more educated population will rise up. The OLPC has the chance to really make an education difference. An old proverb says “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.” In effect, the OLPC has the potential to teach people how to learn anything, and give them the means to actually do so. That's powerful.
–jeremy
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Microsoft Shown Involved with Baystar and SCO

October 11, 2006 Leave a comment

Amazing how long we go between SCO stories these days, isn't it? From the Groklaw article:
On page 21 in IBM's Amended Redacted Memorandum in Support of its Motion for Summary Judgment on SCO's Interference Claims (SCO's Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Causes of Action [PDF], IBM reveals that SCO alleged that it was IBM that got BayStar to threaten litigation against SCO and to terminate its business relationship. BayStar denies it, as does IBM. If you noticed a Declaration by Larry Goldfarb on the list of exhibits [PDF], this is what it's about. He provided a declaration for IBM stating that SCO's allegations aren't true. A lot of folks have done so too, and so IBM is now asking the court to toss out these three SCO claims.
BayStar, Goldfarb testifies, dumped SCO because its stock price, financial performance and the viability of its UNIX products all appeared to be in decline, and he “was also very concerned about SCO's high cash burn rate.” Pure financial animals get nervous when that happens. But the kicker was he began to realize that Microsoft, whose senior VP of corporate development and strategy had promised that Microsoft would in some way guarantee the SCO investment, started showing signs it might not do that after all:
“Mr. Emerson and I discussed a variety of investment structures wherein Microsoft would 'backstop,' or guarantee in some way, BayStar's investment…. Microsoft assured me that it would in some way guarantee BayStar's investment in SCO.” After the investment was made, Goldfarb says, “Microsoft stopped returning my phone calls and emails, and to the best of my knowledge, Mr. Emerson was fired from Microsoft.”
While various previous leaks implicated Microsoft in the funding of the SCO charade, nothing as concrete as this had been released to my knowledge. The ironic part here, is that in the end, it appears this case may have helped both Linux and Open Source. It has given credence to the GPL, spread the word about Linux in places it may not have gotten exposure and it's made IBM and Linux a well-known, well-regarded combo. Even worse for Microsoft, I'd guess that IBM (and potentially Novell) will probably go after them now. As a monopoly who has already gone through litigation with the DOJ, this would be bad for them. Potentially very bad. In a year that is likely going to see Vista delayed one last time, this is certainly a headache they don't need. This may get more interesting than I'd have thought.
–jeremy
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Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row

October 11, 2006 Leave a comment

There is currently a debate going between Theo de Raadt and a Red Hat employee about the OLPC choice to use a network driver that does not have open specs available. From the article:
Theo de Raadt, the leader of the OpenBSD project and a vociferous crusader for hardware (especially networking) documentation, recently went public with his concerns about the One Laptop Per Child project's choice to use a wireless networking chip from Marvell, a company with an unusually poor record of supporting free software operating systems, in the 2B1 laptop computer that it is developing. Marvell is unwilling to freely supply hardware documentation so that programmers can create device drivers that properly interface with its wireless chips
Part of the response from Jim Gettys follows:

* OLPC is dedicated to open source
* Our mission — from the beginning — is to make the process as open and transparent as possible. That anyone can air their concerns, misinformed as they may be, long before our system is shipping reflects this. Our systems won’t be produced in volume until late next spring.
* We are part of the free and open source community ourselves.
* and we are a non-profit organization; our number one priority is to provide laptops to children in developing nations: this brings unique requirements on many aspects of our hardware choices.
The Marvell wireless chip is in fact unique in the market at the moment.
Many or most children in the world do not have electric power, nor do they have computer networking. Without power being available, even if access points cost nothing, you have no network. So we are deploying mesh networking, to allow a child’s laptop to forward packets for their friend or neighbor’s laptop; each laptop becomes, in effect, a battery powered access point for the others.
Even as low power as the AMD Geode is, if it is turned on, it will consume 5-10 times the power that the Marvell wireless chip will consume. So for it to be feasible to have a human-powered laptop, essential since a good fraction of the world’s children lack electricity, is use a mesh network to connect the kids machines to each other and often to the Internet, so that those children can learn from each other, their teachers and the world as a whole.
If you're interested in the entire progression, Open Letter, Response, Retort. Jim also points out that the OLPC system is the first mass production system designed in which the BIOS firmware and loader is open (LinuxBIOS), that OLPC has gotten AMD to release the code for VSA (Virtual System Architecture) and that Marvell did actually redesign some things to be more standards compliant.
I've been meaning to take a closer look at the OLPC project for a while now. The general principle is very good from what I've seen, my main question is what the actual numbers look like and whether it is a sustainable project that has a realistic chance of making a tangible difference. I'll be digging more into that over the next couple of days. In the mean time, their assertion that “The basic assumption is that education is at the root of any solution” is very in line with my general doctrine. That alone really makes me like what they are trying to do. The fact that, by it's very nature, Open Source creates a level playing field makes it a natural fit for a project like this. But what if no hardware for a specific piece of the project is available with open specs. Leaning on the vendor seems like the right thing to do to me, but can you realistically delay the entire project until that lobbying bares fruit? What if it never comes to fruition, do you then hope an open spec device exists soon enough? In the end, you need to do what's best to meet the end goals of your project. For OLPC, the children are first and being 100% open is not. It seems being as open as possible, however, is. In that context, this decision makes sense. Theo seems to think there may be other cards out there that fit the bill, but I don't know enough about that to comment.
One side note that I found interesting is that Theo is not a proponent of pushing for open firmware. His quote:
Some people (mostly just RMS) insist on firmware source code. We do not feel that we need or even want firmware source code — just the missing binary component that allows the device to operate. Our #1 goal is that our users be able to use the devices they purchased. We feel that when RMS insists on things which vendors will never give, he confuses the vendors, and the vendors back off and end up giving us nothing at all. As a result, everyone loses — RMS, the vendors, the operating system suppliers, and the users. This is not (yet) the time or place to make such strict statements.
That seems like an extremely realistic and even headed statement, which to me is real progress and a sign that the Open Source community is maturing. Keep in mind that OpenBSD has had multiple wins in getting specs to write Open Source drivers, especially in the network space. In the end, OLPC is working on an open driver/firmware so this may all be moot. The good news here is that both sides have good intentions, while having differing goals. Vigilance on both sides is a good thing, IMHO.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Oracle To Bring Siebel CRM To Linux

October 10, 2006 Leave a comment

Furthering its commitment to Linux, Oracle has announced that the newest version of Siebel CRM will support Linux. From the article:
The independent Siebel Systems, bought by Oracle for over $5 billion last year, had not pledged to support Linux. It had, however, worked with IBM to ensure that Siebel CRM could work with DB2 database running on Linux.
Still, this news is kind of a no-brainer for Oracle watchers. The Redwood Shores, Calif. company has said it has moved the bulk of its internal systems to Linux already. It has also said it is moving its internal CRM system to Siebel. Ergo, Siebel had better run on Linux.
A spokeswoman confirmed that the company is now implementing the nascent Siebel 8 CRM internally and that Siebel 8 will support Linux. It is likely Oracle executives will talk about this development at Oracle OpenWorld kicking off October 22 in San Francisco.
No mention of which distribution(s) will be supported, nor was there any further rumors about an Oracle-supported Linux release. One has to guess that at a minimum RHEL and SLES will be on the support list. It's good to see Linux continuing to move up the chain, further and further into the enterprise space. Oracle is obviously a huge player in this space, and the fact that they are moving more toward linux internally says a lot.
–jeremy
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Microsoft on warding off the Linux threat

October 5, 2006 1 Comment

Wow. The hubris in this ZDNet interview is astounding. While some people at Microsoft are certainly adapting to a shifting business landscape, Nick McGrath, Microsoft's head of platform strategy in the UK, is a shining example of what is wrong with the Microsoft corporate culture. Reading the interviews it becomes clear that factual information and reality are of no concern. At times, you almost expect him to say something along the lines of “nah nah nah, I can't hear you”. Items like:
Q. Presumably you accept that there is more Linux in businesses than a few years ago?
A. No, I don't accept that at all.
show that either he is purposely being deceitful, or he's painful unaware of reality. Neither are good for a “head of platform strategy” IMHO. This interview is something I would have expected a couple years ago, but not today. Whether you like Linux or not, it should be obvious that there is more of it in businesses than a few years ago. Even if it's a small amount when compared to what Microsoft sells, it's still more on a comparative level with itself over time (especially where times is measured in a duration of a few years). It's clear that some people still think Microsoft is invincible, despite thousands of years of human history that categorically tell us that nothing of human origin is invincible. From the greatest of dynasties to the mightiest of companies, every one has a downfall eventually. Putting your head in the sand and denying that will only bring about your demise faster.
–jeremy
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The Truth About a Claimed Firefox Exploit

October 4, 2006 Leave a comment

I'm sure most of you heard about the recent Firefox security issue. The one claiming Firefox is “critically flawed in the way it handles JavaScript” and that over 30 unreleased vulnerabilities exist. It turns out, the whole thing was a hoax. That's right, a ruse. From the Mozilla Developer Center:
We got a chance to talk to Mischa Spiegelmock, the Toorcon speaker that reported the potential javascript security issue referenced earlier. He gave us more code to work with and also made this statement and agreed to let me post it here:
The main purpose of our talk was to be humorous.
As part of our talk we mentioned that there was a previously known Firefox vulnerability that could result in a stack overflow ending up in remote code execution. However, the code we presented did not in fact do this, and I personally have not gotten it to result in code execution, nor do I know of anyone who has.
I have not succeeded in making this code do anything more than cause a crash and eat up system resources, and I certainly haven’t used it to take over anyone else’s computer and execute arbitrary code.
I do not have 30 undisclosed Firefox vulnerabilities, nor did I ever make this claim. I have no undisclosed Firefox vulnerabilities. The person who was speaking with me made this claim, and I honestly have no idea if he has them or not.
I apologize to everyone involved, and I hope I have made everything as clear as possible.
Somehow I don't think Window is laughing. While it's great to see that most of the info was fictitious (there is a legitimate flaw that can be used to crash the browser), in reality tangible damage has been done to the reputation of Firefox. Of course, now the rumors are swirling. Of the two people on stage at the time, one works at Six Apart (which owns LiveJournal) and the other recently claimed responsibility for a fairly high-profile Javascript attack against close to a million LiveJournal users. In addition, there's even a picture of him floating around eating with a bunch of Microsofties. As you can guess, the conspiracy theorists are having a field day. No word on what the fallout of this will be yet, but I'd guess there will be some. As for the real security track record of Firefox, well that's still being decided. My guess (as you may have presumed) is that while it will have problems, they won't be as consistently unpatched as IE ones have been.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

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